Utahhttps://slignot.wordpress.com
Thu, 24 May 2018 19:01:09 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s0.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngUtahhttps://slignot.wordpress.com
Mormon Men’s Reputation and Purity Are All That Mattershttps://slignot.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/mormon-mens-reputation-and-purity-are-all-that-matters/
Fri, 20 May 2016 22:11:30 +0000http://slignot.wordpress.com/?p=2123It’s a breezy mid-May morning up in Northern Utah, and I’m standing at the edge of a wheat field enjoying bird calls and fresh air smelling of green growing wheat stalks. I’m waiting to meet up with a client for work to conduct their annual inspection. I’ve never met the main contact for this company, just corresponded by email before meeting here in what is basically the middle of the nowhere most of the way to the Idaho border.

I hear the rumble of an engine and turn toward the end of the road to see a truck coming to meet me. In it are two men. One introduces himself as my contact, and he introduces the other as his brother. I get in the truck and we begin a tour of the farm.

So much has been written about Mormon purity culture in Utah, and it’s almost difficult to know where to start unpacking and explaining what’s going on in this meeting. Most commonly we talk about the purity culture in Utah from the standpoint of keeping students ignorant of their own bodies and sexuality or just flat out slut shaming women. Those are important elements certainly, but what is at play here is both uniquely tied into Mormon sexual culture and very, very old.

Simply put, I represent the medieval demonic temptress who wants nothing more than to destroy men’s vulnerable souls. My very presence is read as sexually contaminating the morality and reputation of the man I’m here to meet for business. And that is why he brought protection: another man to chaperone and preserve religiously based moral authority and honor.

When I return to the office a female coworker asks me who the client brought with him. Because she knows. Because he did it to her last year, as have many of our other clients. Another customer I met with last week also made sure I wasn’t alone with him. They don’t bring along chaperones to meet with our male inspectors. It’s always about our presence being dangerous, so they’ll defend themselves in ways no one talks about or acknowledges.

A couple years ago, a male inspector was in training to do these kinds of inspections and needed to shadow someone experienced on an inspection. That inspector refused to carpool in a fleet vehicle with my female coworker for a commute that was over an hour long because “he is a bishop.” Her potential sexual availability him (despite being married and being universally professional) is taken as a given, one that has to be protected against because his reputation can’t survive it. There is no question of what seems obvious to people unfamiliar with the overwhelming influence of Mormonism on Utah question: that men and women can work together professionally without sex being implied.

His religious misogyny was given accommodation and two vehicles were allocated to send two employees from the main office to the site. His religious authority allowed him to refuse to work following the same rules as everyone else and let him implicitly state my coworker was a sexual threat to him. By allowing this, management reinforced that my coworker’s dignity and professionalism are beneath his comfort.

The truly exhausting and angering part of this from my point of view is that there actually is an issue of potential risk and safety at play when I meet with clients out in the field, and it is given no consideration or value whatsoever by these Very Concerned men. Mine. The gender safety gap is something inextricably tied into male privilege and rape culture, but it’s impossible for me not to factor the potential vulnerability of driving far into empty spaces without so much a nearby occupied house to meet with a man I have never met alone. My feelings or comparative vulnerability weren’t even considered at this appointment. The client decided not just to meet me on his land far away from anywhere with indeterminate cellular reception, but to meet me with another man I don’t know and didn’t know was coming. If he had considered it, would he have made the same decision to bring another male stranger?

I’m not actively afraid and don’t think I’m likely to be harmed, of course. But that initial hesitation is still here. It’s the same reason I make sure before I go out in the field I tell my spouse where I’m going to be, even if I say it halfway as a joke. The same reason I text to check in at lunchtime afterward. Just to be safe. Because in Utah, one of the crime rates that’s universally higher than the national average is sexual violence. I can’t forget that when I’m living my life here in Utah. It colors everything I do in subtle ways.

When I initially talked about this on Twitter, a man outside of Utah was confused why the chaperone the client brought along wasn’t a woman. Elizabeth Mitchell (@Pixelfish on Twitter) replied first, explaining that this would mean he would be alone with the female chaperone before and after meeting me. Which is true, although it’s also more than that as well; in a lot of ways, bringing another man along for when you’re going to be alone with a women is an extension of companionship on an LDS mission.

Adult men in the general congregation in Mormonism are considered to have religious authority purely due to their gender. Men who would be considered laymen in other religions are considered to have priesthood and that is also part of what’s happening here. Bringing along a male peer is bringing along someone with moral and religious authority who watches your behavior to help you behave righteously. If you brought a woman, you wouldn’t have that aura of upright & moral behavior to counter any sense of sexual tainting by working with a woman.

The most frustrating thing about this is I’m not even surprised anymore when this happens to me. This is my life as a woman in Utah. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to quietly accept sexist garbage as inevitable.

It’s so good to know that not only is the court’s decision being used to hurt women in favor of protecting powerful men, but it is now also set up to ensure they can dodge questions from the Department of Labor about kids. Because if you can’t use religious authority to control and coerce the powerless and vulnerable, what good is it?

“It is not for the Court to “inquir[e] into the theological merit of the belief in question,” Sam wrote, citing the Hobby Lobby decision. “The determination of what is a ‘religious’ belief or practice is more often than not a difficult and delicate task …. However, the resolution of that question is not to turn upon a judicial perception of the particular belief or practice in question; religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection.”

The idea that religion is increasingly allowing people to exempt themselves from following laws should be chilling. Yet instead I see more and more reluctance to actually justly enforce laws (including basic protections for children) with staggering deference to religious claims without examination.

]]>slignotUtah Polygyny Often Intricately Linked with Child Brideshttps://slignot.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/utah-polygyny-often-intricately-linked-with-child-brides/
Thu, 20 Mar 2014 16:00:41 +0000http://slignot.wordpress.com/?p=2105Growing up in Utah, my biases about polygamy and polyamory were deeply marked by the oppressive religious practice of control and child rape practiced by some splinter sects of the LDS faith. The obvious difference is consent, but I had to unlearn years of association of polyamory with coercion and abuse.

It’s easy to condemn those in other places that condone child rape through marriage. It’s safe and comfortable. But the painful fact is, I live in a state where child brides have been (and almost certainly continue to be) part of an ongoing system of abuse. I have a deep rage that the communities where it happens are calculatedly isolated, and they exert total control over the lives of growing children, who have even less capacity for autonomy & consent than most.

We are talking about the kind of subculture that has literally burned books intended for a local library to keep control and maintain ignorance. It’s been almost impossible to find and prosecute the child marriages rapes because the communities have their own police and shunning the outside world is a religious imperative.

What’s even worse, even men who have admitted their child rape may not even be eligible for prosecution because within the last decade Utah’s legal code allowed the rape of girls as young as 14 so long as their parents consent.

At the time, Utah’s marriage age was 14 with parental consent. In 2005, the Utah State Legislature changed it to 16. In 2003, the legislature made any polygamous marriage involving anyone under 18 a felony of child bigamy.

Shit like this shows just how uninterested our judicial system really is in prioritizing the protection of adolescents from predators using religious coercion. When as recently as 10 years ago, parents’ will could substitute for full legal consent to sexual activity, it’s clear that far from being the enlightened moral actors we make ourselves out to be, we are just beginning to question living in the dark ages.

A criticism (I believe fairly) lodged against more moderate religious voices is they give cover to, and downplay the abuse of more extreme versions because they find criticism of religiously backed abuses uncomfortable. There is no more clear example in our modern backyard than the fact that a man like Winston Blackmore may not even have committed a crime under our laws.

]]>slignotNot Again, Ezra Kleinhttps://slignot.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/not-again-ezra-klein/
Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:06:43 +0000http://slignot.wordpress.com/?p=2047Like most Americans, I am outraged that the United States Senate is procedurally broken. I’m incensed that the always dubious filibuster has been used to obstruct popular and necessary legislation. I’m beyond merely angry that the minority Republicans successfully blocked debate on a bill addressing long-overdue gun sale regulation.

]]>slignotYes, the United States Senate is “Very, Very Unequal.” And that’s a good thing.https://slignot.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/yes-the-united-states-senate-is-very-very-unequal-and-thats-a-good-thing/
Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:20:02 +0000http://slignot.wordpress.com/?p=2007I normally love the kind of numerical/graphical analysis Ezra Klein does. So it was with great shock and frustration I watched him do his signature challenge while he was guest hosting the Rachel Maddow Show last Monday and he explained the Senate structure giving influence to less populous states as a bug, not a feature. (His shorter writeup post is up at the Washington Post here.)

It’s factually correct that the way that the US Constitution sets up the Senate, it decreases the proportional power of the residents of populous states in a major way. More so now than it did when the Constitution was first drafted (from approximately 11:1 to 66:1). He includes this big and shocking looking graphic showing the seemingly over-weighted influence the same population has at the federal level.

Washington Post Graphic from Ezra Klein’s Article

What he doesn’t really talk about is why the architects of our federal government would choose to create an inherently lopsided seeming system of representation. There was the idea that a number of checks would be required to ensure that risk inherent in democracy, the “tyranny of the majority,” was balanced. Small states feared (reasonably I might add) that because they were small their interests and needs would likely be swallowed if a majority of highly populous states ignored the need.

Our Constitution and federal government is structured in such a way to recognize that and mitigate harms. To protect individuals, we have the Bill of Rights, later amendments and a judiciary system to ensure that the rights of of individuals don’t get trampled. But what about the representation needs of people in less populous states? Well for that, we have the United States Senate.

A major function of government and taxation is to ensure that vulnerable and poor people in our population are given the support they need; it’s the “common welfare” idea from the preamble. But there is no reason why that allocation would be proportional by state. In fact, when you look at the states with lower populations, there is a decent correlation between states that are lower in population but significantly higher in terms of poverty and strained infrastructure.

What’s more, some states are burdened in ways others are not. As a concrete example, the Intermountain West has two things that either directly govern or highly influence every important aspect of life here: lots and lots of space and very little water. That reality means our populations are clustered around areas where we can find enough water to survive, mainly around mountain ranges with reservoirs. What does that mean? Lots and lots of infrastructure costs; without federal transportation funds, we couldn’t function in a modern way*. We rely on interstate highway corridors for transportation in a way that other states don’t need to. Does that mean we’re “making out like bandits?”

I don’t think so. States will smaller populations are going to necessarily have a harder time generating comparable tax revenue to cover the needs of their citizens than highly populous states with affluent urban centers. Okay you say, but what does that have to do with the original idea of super-lopsided representation in the Senate?

Imagine for a moment what it would be like if the Senate were proportional body like the House of Representatives. What would happen to the federal aid, infrastructure and other funds that small states rely on? Well, it seems safe to say that we wouldn’t get most of it. It’s a lot easier to ignore the needs of constituents of small, poor states with two or three representatives when their votes have zero clout and impact in how federal legislation is passed in D.C.

So stop telling Californians they should hate the Senate, Ezra Klein. It does what it’s supposed to.

*In Utah, the town of Boulder got its postal delivery by pack mule well after World War II because of how remote & isolating the geography is.

]]>slignotWashington Post Graphic from Ezra Klein's ArticlePuppies Playing in the First Major Snowfall of the Yearhttps://slignot.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/puppies-playing-in-the-first-major-snowfall-of-the-year/
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:46:50 +0000http://slignot.wordpress.com/?p=1893Despite being rather hairless, our older dog Midna loves the snow. We adopted Atrus this spring, so we really had no idea what he thought of snow. Turns out they both love playing in it, although with his fluffy coat, Atrus is much happier laying down (and occasionally rolling) in the snow. It’s a little tricky trying to capture them running circles around the yard at top speed, but I do have video of the puppies playing together.

I have them playing together Friday when the storm first started. She’s wearing her raincoat (over her knit sweater), but I found that Atrus bites her a bit too hard and it comes off and gets in the way.

Thrack took some video of the puppies Sunday after we bought Midna a giant puffy new coat. At first, she didn’t like that the snow was deeper, but she eventually got more excited about playing in it.

]]>slignotPhotographic Vignettes # 26https://slignot.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/photographic-vignettes-26/
Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:00:38 +0000http://slignot.wordpress.com/?p=1880Last week I was talking to a friend and realized I had never put up a post showing photographs of Arches National Park. I am ashamed and have decided to rectify the problem.

Stone arches are certainly not unique to Utah or the Intermountain West, but what makes Arches National Park so noteworthy is the concentration of arches. The park has over 2,000 individual arches interspersed with other fantastically weathered formations.

A quick note about arches versus bridges. Both of them are open spans created by erosion, but arches are created by intermittent water and a natural bridge is formed by continuous water flow like a river or stream. Below is a natural bridge for comparison (specifically Sipapu at Natural Bridges National Monument).

The arches at Arches, are all actually of a newer stone layer than the bridge above. They’re from the layers called Entrada and Navajo sandstone and date to the Jurassic Period (Natural Bridges shown is from the Permian). And much of the exposed sandstone in Arches shows desert varnish, a mixture of elemental, clay and organic material that makes the normally red stone look deep brown.

]]>slignotUtah's iconic Delicate ArchSheer Walls of Park AvenueSipapu Bridge at Natural Bridges National MonumentThree PenguinsNorth and South Windows behind Petrified DunesParade of ElephantsCove ArchBelow Cove ArchFiery FurnaceLandscape ArchView North through Park AvenueBalanced RockSkyline ArchThree GossipsOur Mountainshttps://slignot.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/our-mountains/
Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:49:22 +0000http://slignot.wordpress.com/?p=1784Early European explorers, passers-through and pioneers had no great love for the young & tall mountains in the West. Mountains, sandstone canyons and mesas were barriers and impediments through unfamiliar landscape. A hard and sometimes cruel land that looked grey and barren to their eyes. The names they gave on maps reflect this, bearing innumerable hellish descriptors or names like “starvation.”

Mountains in their old homelands carried strange stories or were home to vengeful gods and spirits. Even some of those who recognized the great beauty of these vistas emphasized their danger and separation from people.

For us, our mountains are incredibly important. My great aunt once told us that the end of a flight home when the well-known peaks came into view, it felt like being wrapped up in a warm blanket. These mountains are home itself in a very powerful way.

And it isn’t that they’re loved because the ranges are beautiful and majestic. It’s not their draw for skiing tourism or an easy connection to nature & recreation. It’s not because it makes navigation easier because you never lose your sense of direction. All this is true, but there is a more powerful force at work.

Without these mountains, we could not live. This place would be more open space, sparsely populated by unfortunate tribes confined to too little land on reservations while the rest would most likely be more land on which the military drops weapons. Our Western sagebrush ocean has always been seen as useless but for its financial utility by the federal government that owns the majority of our state.

It is our mountains that let people thrive in this wild and arid place; we rely on mountains for water. Every drop of rain and (especially) flake of snow that falls in our mountains near reservoirs becomes part of the next year’s water supply. Because we need them, mountains become precious not just for beauty and wilderness. They mean home.

Family outings and picnics up the many canyons are a childhood staple. When I’m tired or stressed, a short trip up the canyons provides incredible refreshment and joy. The landscape with rushing water and the reminder of life with greenery and the animal sounds all around me are euphoric and transcendental.

The dogs seem to have a good time too. Although I think in the future, I’ll avoid trying to shoot video while tethered to exploring, happy canines.

]]>slignotLittle Cottonwood Canyon Wall from the RoadRushing water up Little Cottonwood CanyonLower flow in record heat of 2012 summerWhat it's really all about: WATERThistles: pokey and prettyGiant Fallen Granite Boulder & TreesBrave Midna @ Little Cottonwood Canyon 1Brave Midna at Little Cottonwood Canyon 2Brave Midna at Little Cottonwood Canyon 3Brave Midna at Little Cottonwood Canyon 4Brave Midna at Little Cottonwood Canyon 5Brave Midna at Little Cottonwood Canyon 6Dogs at the stream edgeDownstream viewAtrus finds this rock fascinatingMore Canyon WallsWater flowing through Little Cottonwood CanyonMidna also finds the rock fascinating, but from underneathThe other bankBranches washed down during springGubernatorial Appointment Cloaked in Electionshttps://slignot.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/gubernatorial-appointment-cloaked-in-elections/
Fri, 07 Sep 2012 22:22:27 +0000http://slignot.wordpress.com/?p=1786I’ve always known the system was rigged against Utah public school students receiving a thorough and evidence based education, but I had no idea just how broken the structure truly is. In Utah, while individual school districts have local controls, statewide direction is ultimately up to an elected Board of Education.

The trouble is, while the board members are technically elected, the process by which individuals end up on the ballot is anything but a fair democratic representation of the will of the people. The first step is a committee, whose members are appointed by the governor. Their job is to nominate and review individuals to produce three recommendations out of a pool of candidates. The committee passes on those recommendations to the governor who selects which two will appear on the ballot for Utah voters. Anyone else see the problem here?

The commitee has on multiple occasions removed an incumbent board member from the list submitted to the governor based on their opposition to the governor’s public policies. From the Salt Lake Tribune, we learn that two incumbent board members have filed suit alleging that the nomination process is violates the United States Constitution.

Utah’s controversial way of picking candidates for the state school board has landed the state and its attorney general in court — again.

And yes, this is not the first lawsuit, more on that in a minute.

Incumbent Carol Murphy was elected by Park City area voters four years ago, but rejected in her re-election bid by the Committee for the Recruitment and Nomination of Members of the Utah State Board of Education last April. She is joined by plaintiffs Carmen Snow, who was rejected as a candidate for the seat representing Washington County, and Stacey McGinnis, who wanted to vote for Snow.

The suit alleges the women were rejected, in violation of their First Amendment rights, because they are advocates of public education rather than what it calls “privatization” of schools via school vouchers and other mechanisms.

According to Utah law, the committee, appointed every two years by the governor, scrutinizes those who want to run for the board and submits to the governor the names of three final candidates for every open seat. The governor then picks the two candidates whose names will appear on the November ballot in state school board districts statewide.

The suit contends the system politicizes the school board. It alleges that the committee is heavily weighted with business interests and lobbyists who favor privatizing education and rejects candidates who don’t pass a conservative litmus test.

“For example, the questionnaire required candidates to state their support or opposition to Utah Core Curriculum Standards and the teaching of sex education in public schools, two highly contentious issues, both of which have been driven by ultra-conservative factions of Utah’s Republican Party,” it said. [Emphasis added]

The Utah Education Associationopposes the current near-appointment system, saying that because the decision is “contingent upon the approval of the Governor [it] takes away the voice of the people in the electoral process.” Moreover, they support keeping the races non-partisan, but making reforms. The UEA states that removing the governor’s conflict riddled control over the process would “increase accountability to voters and better involve the community in the electoral process” and “allow for implementation of good policy, free from party platforms.”

Some, including Third District Court Judge Anthony Quinn have argued that since the eventual nominees are elected, that there is no issue to be concerned with. When ruling against ousted member Denis Morill two years ago, Quinn wrote the process is legitimate because the recommendations “are neither binding nor unilateral, since the ultimate decision as to who is elected … is determined by the outcome of a general election by the public.” Nevermind that the system is gamed from the outset to give voters only the choice the governor’s appointed committee and governor himself choose to give us.

Others will say that because the races are all non-partisan, and we all support our children’s education, we needn’t be bothered too much about a conflict of interest or lack of democratic process in representing the wishes of Utah citizens. On the contrary, while education policy has always had elements of partisan politics, it is especially politicized in an era of a Republican party that increasingly supports libertarian ideas that government should be out of education, that voucher systems should be allowed to drain public schools of resources, and that hostility to science should be fostered so as not to threaten the religious indoctrination of children.

This shouldn’t be difficult. It’s obvious that deciding education policy is already a politicized issue; all you have to do is look at how vigorously people dissent about substantive issues for public schooling. What we have to do now is make sure that the party in control (and in Utah, that party will be the Republican party for a very, very long time) can’t keep a stranglehold on the process without any input from the people they were elected to serve.

]]>slignotI Feel Like a Puppy Has Followed Me Home. And I Don’t Know What to Do About It.https://slignot.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/i-feel-like-a-puppy-has-followed-me-home-and-i-dont-know-what-to-do-about-it/
Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:46:20 +0000http://slignot.wordpress.com/?p=1723I’ve mentioned I’m going to be laid off, and soon. I have my good days and bad days, and I’m largely tending toward anxiety and stress lately. There are things I like and hate about my workplace, some of which are generic office things, but many of which have to do with an overtly Mormon office culture. I have to edit not just my vocabulary for professional standards, which is fine, but I also have to edit out things in my life that would make my workplace extra uncomfortable and filled with judgement. If someone asks about a weekend where I had a nice time with family or friends, I edit out the parts that include drinking, etc.

One of the few really nice things about my office is there are a number of nice people, some LDS and some not. I’m on close terms with a number of people here, but I’ll be honest, I’m really not planning on hanging out outside of work. Because all they know is my office presentation. I might loosen up slightly around people I know, like and trust somewhat, but I’m pretty sure that were they to actually know what I think about shit, I’d scare the hell out of them.

Which brings me to the lady who reminds me of a lonely puppy. She was recently hired on in the building maintenance department. She is nice. And I treated her like I treat anyone else here: like a nice human being. Basic chatting with her, keeping everything in the relatively superficial office-speech bubble.

Then something weird and a bit off-putting happened. She announced that I was really cool and nice and interesting, that I treated her with respect (which was unusual, apparently, and that makes me terribly sad), and that she wants to be my friend. And not just in the “let’s grab lunch together” sort of office friends way. She demanded that we exchange contact information, which I did mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. I still don’t.

Here’s the thing: I’m a busy, stressed and currently am a very grumpy curmudgeon. I feel stressed and hurried most of the time. I’m planning on taking advantage of not having a job to finish up my education quickly, while hoping the economy has recovered enough by the time I finish law school that I can find a position. I am not in a place where I’m looking to spend time with someone I don’t even know when I am currently neglecting family and friends I already have. (My internet friends don’t count here because it’s easier to juggle with other real life stuff.)

She and I are simply not in the same place in life, and that’s bound to make creating a friendship tricky. What’s more, unless I’ve read this woman very wrong, she and I are not exactly compatible ideologically. So I feel like she wants to be friends with a perception of who I am, and not me.

I know she’s deeply lonely and she’s just trying to connect with someone who treats her with respect and dignity. I don’t want to crush her by rejecting her out of hand, but I feel like I’m being dishonest about what she could expect from me outside of the office. What happens when she finds out that I reject many things that make her feel happy, safe and comfortable? What happens when she finds out that I’m actually this angry feminist atheist progressive? I feel like I need a disclaimer:

Warning: you don’t know me. You don’t have any idea what I am like. You met me in a professional office where public personas don’t match reality. Individual is not responsible for unsatisfied acquaintances.